An emergency call to organise
With more clients, comes more responsibility. As an accredited electronic security system installer, Global Security Group is a family-run business that found themselves in a predicament. As the number of systems (including intruder alarms, access control and CCTV systems) requiring annual maintenance increased throughout the years, keeping track of which systems needed servicing was a frustrating task. Especially when the data was not easily readable or accessible to staff.
- Time-consuming: Organising and searching for systems due for a service takes a lot of time. So it was often overlooked by the staff who had other priorities.
- Financial Loss: Systems were getting overlooked, not chased by the company or its customers, so what should have been a comfortable revenue stream was not flowing at all.
- Inefficient: The current system (spreadsheets) was not scalable, needing staff to trawl through paper records and online accounts to find missing data to know which customers to ring.
With several pressing priorities and time being a limited resource, Global was missing out on a decent chunk of cash flow. They needed a solution to organise their customer database, and notify them of services which are due on a need-to-know basis.
Key to securing your database
A priority from the beginning was organisation and accessibility. By collaborating with the client we derived an efficient and normalised database architecture. To make the data accessible, we decided a web-platform was the most suitable option. Since it could be accessed remotely and securely, the flexibility was appealing.
- Centralised database: Keeping track of customer data in a secure, compliant and organised manner.
- Automated emails: Notify staff of which systems are due servicing in the next 2 weeks.
- Booking management: After customers have agreed to a job, make a booking with the date, time and the engineer who will attend.
- Calendar integration: Automatically add the booking to the relevant staff calendars, with all necessary information.
- Service History: Track the state of bookings, and update the system’s data to form a comprehensive history of work.
Once the specification was proposed, work began the following week. The end-result was designed to be usable, convenient and helpful.
Booked and ready to go!
Since delivering the system to the client, we integrated new and existing system data into the database, now being worked through and updated to recover the backlog of maintenance work. We look forward to hearing about how we eased their pain in doing so.
At the time of writing:
400+ systems are being maintained by the system.
The critical benefit to our client’s customers is that they can rest assured their security systems are working properly throughout the year- without needing to lift a finger or deal with outages as often.
Learn more about Global Security Group and the work they do providing security to the West Midlands at globalsecuritygroup.co.uk.
